Saturday, January 26, 2008

President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. "Andy" Card, Jr. has observed Senator John McCain's notorious outbursts of anger first-hand, Card said in his first extensive interview since leaving the White House.

Referring to the Republican front-runner for president, Card said, "Sometimes he was pretty angry, but I felt as if he was putting on a show. I don't know if it was an emotional eruption or for effect."

In a July 5 NewsMax.com article, former Senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican who served with McCain on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, "I have witnessed incidents where he has used profanity at colleagues and exploded at colleagues.... He would disagree about something and then explode.

"It was incidents of irrational behavior. We've all had incidents where we have gotten angry, but I've never seen anyone act like that."

But sometimes he has directed it against the gullible public, whom - with the liberals air of superiority - he has often snidely derided.

Sometimes he's directed it at Cabinet members. Like Rumsfeld - who served well, and nobly.

But never at those patriotic folks in the MSM. That wouldn't serve his ego.

(And the liberal MSM loves him right back; for example: Have you ever noticed how he is NEVER photographed from the left!? OF COURSE NOT: It would show his cancer-surgery scars! The MSM would NEVER want you to be reminded of the fact that he has had repeated skin cancer surgeries.)

Do we really want an egomaniac with anger-management issues as Commander in Chief.

For much of last year, Romney downplayed his business experience while trying to appeal to conservative voters largely on social and moral issues.

A Romney ad now airing in Florida highlights his experience in the private sector. "I know how America works, because I spent my life in the real economy," he boasts, in front of the Jacksonville skyline.

"Governor Romney is touting his qualities and his experience and resume as a manager; I am telling the American people - and they know it - that I am a leader," McCain said at a news conference in Fort Lauderdale. McCain was challenged at the news conference over an answer he gave in a debate the previous night when asked by moderator Tim Russert if he had said he was "not well versed on" economic issues.

"Actually, I don't know where you got that quote from," McCain replied.

McCain conceded yesterday that he had made such a remark.

"It was in the context of a conversation on my qualifications to serve: that I am proud of my record as chairman of the commerce committee, of being involved in every single major issue that affects this country," he said.

In fact, on numerous occasions over the course of the campaign, McCain has volunteered that he is unsatisfied with his lack of knowledge about aspects of economics.

"I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated," McCain told the Wall Street Journal in late November.

In December he said, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," as the Globe reported on its "Political Intelligence" blog at the time.

On at least one occasion, McCain has raised the matter himself. On Nov. 10, while traveling through New Hampshire on his Straight Talk Express bus, McCain was asked what he would seek in a vice presidential candidate if nominated.

After mentioning the ability of a potential running mate to replace the president, McCain said, "You also look for people who maybe have talents you don't, or experience or knowledge you don't, as well."

"What are those qualities that you don't - that you wouldn't mind complementing?" asked David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times.

I keep hearing that Jeb Bush quietly supports Romney. Now that Crist has made his last-minute endorsement of McCain, I wonder if Jeb will have the will to endorse Romney. Or maybe Jeb is worried that in a match-up with Crist, he might lose the endorsement game. I would hope he has more confidence than that.

YUP: Dubya - who gave us shamnesty, Harriet Miers, Dubai Ports, Hamas-istan, the ROP, Pharmaceutical coverage for Medicare, and NCLB (which together amount to the largest increase in domestic spending since LBJ's GREAT SOCIETY! YEAH: MORE THAN BJ CLINTON), - is a conservative compared to McCain.

Our current economic jitters are caused by the sub-prime panic and the extremely high price for a barrel of oil.

The monetary moves of the FED have helped the situation, but that's just dealing with one part of the problem.

TO PREVENT A WORLDWIDE RECESSION, WE MUST ALSO GET ENERGY COSTS DOWN.

Oil prices are high because of supply-and-demand: demand is up but supplies are flat.

CONGRESS CAN CHANGE THIS.

All Congress has to do is expand energy supplies, and the price of oil will come down.

All we need to do is start oil drilling in ANWR, off the coasts of CA and FLA, and license a dozen clean-coal power plants and a dozen nuclear power plants, and the price of oil will drop the next day.

A decorated combat veteran and war hero, Johnson was awarded two Silver Stars, two Legions of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, one Bronze Star with Valor, two Purple Hearts, four Air Medals, and three Outstanding Unit Awards.

... During the Korean War, Johnson flew 62 combat missions in his F-86, stationed just 25 miles away from the front lines.In his plane, Shirley’s Texas Tornado, Johnson scored one MiG fighter kill, one probable and one damaged.While Johnson took his share of enemy gunfire and flak, he emerged from the war unscathed.

Back at Nellis AFB in Nevada, Johnson flew the solo and slot positions for the world-renowned Air Force Thunderbirds precision flying demonstration team in the F-100 super sabre.

In the Vietnam War during his first tour of duty, he worked at Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV) headquarters in Saigon, helping coordinate the first B-52 strikes under General Westmoreland.

During Johnson’s second tour, he flew F-4 Phantom combat missions with the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing in Thailand.During his second tour of duty, Johnson flew his 25th combat mission on April 16, 1966. Shot down at dusk over North Vietnam, Johnson suffered a broken right arm, dislocated left shoulder and a broken back.It was these injuries that the enemy captors would use in their constant efforts to glean information from Johnson.

Johnson spent nearly seven years as a prisoner of war, 42 months in solitary confinement.Forced into solitary when his captives labeled him a “die-hard,” Johnson committed 374 names to memory from tapping a special code on the prison wall. “We were all trying to memorize names in case anybody got out,” Johnson remembers.

While held in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, Johnson spent 72 days in leg stocks.A day after that torture ended, his captives forced him into leg irons for 2 ½ years.Weighing

200 lbs when shot down, an emaciated Johnson got down to an estimated 120 lbs while barely surviving on the occasional “meal” of weeds from the river, pig fat, white rice, or pumpkin soup.

HERE'S WHAT HE HAD TO SAY ABOUT THE DEFEATIST DEMS - THE THEMES ARE AS VALID NOW AS WHEN HE DELIVERED THIS SPEECH ON THE FLOOR OF THE HOUSE:

WE MUSTN'T LET ANYONE FORGET THAT THE DEMS WOULD HAVE HAD US SURRENDER IRAQ TO AL QAEDA AND IRAN.

THEY CANNOT BE TRUSTED WITH NATIONAL SECURITY OR THE DEFENSE OF THE FREE WORLD.

AND THOUGH MCCAIN - (LIKE JOHNSON A FORMER POW) - CAN BE TRUSTED WITH THE WAR,MCCAIN CANNOT BE TRUSTED WITH ANYTHING ELSE --- ESPECIALLY NOT WITH A DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED CONGRESS.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accepted a handful of coca leaves from his Bolivian ally Evo Morales and chewed them during a summit meeting, saying "coca isn't cocaine."

"You know the strength that coca gives," Chavez said. "I've really grown used to it every day in the morning." ... Chavez called that "a serious thing," but smiled as he thanked Morales for recently sending coca to him and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Chavez asked for more.

Pakistani authorities have arrested more suspects in connection with the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on a tip from a detained suspect, a senior official said Saturday.

A 15-year-old boy Aitzaz Shah was arrested from the northwestern city of Dera Islamil Khan earlier this week, who had reportedly told the investigators that he was part of a back-up group who attacked Bhutto.

Caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said that on the indication of Shah, authorities had taken into custody more suspects allegedly involved in the Dec 27 assassination. However, he did not disclose more details.

Nawaz said the Scotland Yard team investigated the assassination quickly and had got certain clues. He said some members of the team would return to Pakistan within the next few days.

The government had changed the strategy to quell militancy, Nawaz said. 'Militants targeting the security forces will be crushed.'

MUSHARRAF IS A GOOD ALLY.

HE WILL CRUSH THE ENEMY.

BTW: I PREDICT THAT SCOTLAND YARD WILL CONFIRM PAKISTAN'S ORIGINAL C.O.D. FOR BHUTTO: A SKULL FRACTURE FROM THE BOMB, AND NOT BULLETS. SHE WASN'T HIT BY ANY BULLETS; IN FACT, THATS WHAT THE VIDEOS PROVE.

The Indian state of West Bengal, battling the country’s worst outbreak of deadly bird flu, appealed on Saturday to the federal government to send “all possible help to defeat” the virus.

The call by state animal resources minister Anisur Rahaman came as authorities struggled to stop the disease spreading beyond the 12 out of 19 state districts already affected.

“We have to control the disease immediately as the deadly H5N1 virus has been spreading fast,” Rahaman said, adding “avian flu is knocking on the doors of Kolkata,” the eastern state’s congested capital of 13.5 million people.

“I’m urging the federal government to send all possible help to defeat the virus before it affects the humans,” he told AFP.

New Delhi has already sent some medical teams and other assistance to the state.

Three days of heavy rains have held up efforts to slaughter poultry, turning some rural dirt roads into muddy rivers and making it impossible for health teams to reach chicken farms in the poverty-ridden state.

Rahaman said he was deeply concerned by reports some villagers in rural areas were eating slaughtered chickens.

“We don’t understand why people do not understand the dangers of the disease despite repeated warnings,” he said, adding children were still playing with chickens.

Humans typically catch the disease by coming into direct contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the H5N1 strain may mutate into a form easily transmissible between people.

Panic about bird flu has gripped Kolkata after news spread that the disease had reached the outskirts of the city on Friday.

Few shops were selling poultry on Saturday in the city.

“Not a single customer has come to my shop since the morning,” said Malati Mondal, a store owner.

The government has raised the number of chickens to be slaughtered to 2.5 million from 2.2 million, Rahaman said, adding 1.3 million had been killed so far.

Workers at entry points to Kolkata were disinfecting vehicles entering the city.

India has not had any human cases of bird flu. But Rahaman said he feared the disease would spread to humans with hundreds of people reporting flu symptoms.

LAHORE: Taliban chief Mullah Omar has sacked Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud for fighting against the Pakistan Army instead of with NATO forces, Asia Times Online reported on Friday.

The news website quoted Mullah Omar as telling other Taliban commanders to turn their focus on NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan.

The sacking comes at a time when President Pervez Musharraf has launched an intense military operation against Baitullah in South Waziristan.

Mullah Omar appointed Baitullah as TTP chief, according to the website. Baitullah has been sacked at a time when the Taliban’s spring offensive is just months away. “The Afghan front is quiet because the Taliban and Al Qaeda militants are heavily engaged in fighting Pakistani security forces in Waziristan.

Therefore, Mullah Omar has put his foot down to reset goals for the Taliban: struggle in Afghanistan and not against Pakistan, as was being done by Baitullah Mehsud,” the website reported.

Faqir refuses:

It also quoted intelligence sources as saying that Omar appointed Maulvi Faqir Muhammad as TTP chief but Faqir refused to accept the designation after which the local Taliban were holding meetings to find Baitullah’s replacement. Sources told Asia Times that with Baitullah replaced, Omar would use all Taliban resources in the Tribal Areas to dislodge NATO troops from Afghanistan. However, this leaves Baitullah and his loyalists completely isolated to fight Pakistani forces, according to the report. Baitullah is already named by the government as the main suspect behind Benazir Bhutto’s killing.

THESE DIVISION'S REVEAL THAT THE ENEMY IS BEING SMASHED UNDER THE HAMMER AND ANVIL OF NATO AND THE PAKISTAN ARMY.

IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE WE KILL ALL THE BIGGIES IN THE REGION - OMAR, INCLUDED.

SEVERAL BIG BLOGGERS ARE POSTING TODAY WHAT THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS POSTED 6 DAYS AGO!THAT'S RIGHT, WE SCOOPED POWER LINE, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS, PAJAMAS MEDIA, HOT AIR - AND EVEN REUTERS!

He Didn't Give at the Office — Remember that picture of Yasser Arafat, blood donor? — Charles Enderlin is the France 2 Jerusalem correspondent who broadcast the incendiary account of the death of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura at the hands of Israeli troops operating in the Gaza Strip in September 2000.

HE DIDN'T GIVE AT THE OFFICE — This week we've seen the news services become pure instruments of terrorist propaganda on behalf of Hamas. As Noah Pollak and Pajamas Media pointed out, even Time jumped in to lend a hand. Rest assured that the organs of the mainstream media will not pause …

China poses as a rising star in the world of commerce, industry, technology andscience. But China's recent stock market scare reveals how closely China'ssuccess hangs upon financial and technological achievements in the west. IfChina were unable to steal,counterfeit, pirate, and reverse-engineersuperior achievements of technology and science in the west, how many decadesbehind the west would China be?

The government believes that, in thenext few years, China will surpass South Korea in technical abilities, andGermany in GDP. While China is still a minor player in the world of militaryhigh tech, the government is putting lots of money and effort into changingthis. Expensive, and long term, efforts are being made to produce high techitems like jet engines, missiles and military electronics. At the current rateof progress, Chinese military technology will match that of the United States ina decade or so.

In a mad rush to surpass the west, China is poisoning its airand water, destroying and depleting its topsoil, stealing from its tradingpartners, sending poisoned toys,food,and other merchandise overseas,misrepresenting the size and health of its banks and state enterprises, andbecoming the world's leading destructive state computer hacker and possiblecurrency counterfeiter (via N. Korea).

...there is a long record inChina of sending government-directed missions overseas to buy or shamelesslysteal the best civil and military technology available, reverse engineer it, andbuild an industrial complex that supports the growth of China as a commercialand military power....The allegations against Chen Jin, of Jiaotong Universityin Shanghai, are an example of the entrepreneurial approach people take towardindustrial espionage and intellectual property theft in China. Chen returned toChina after earning a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2003, Chinatreated Chen like a national hero for inventing China's first signal processingmicrochip. Last week, Jiaotong University dismissed him, and Chen stands accusedof hiring flocks of migrant workers with good manual dexterity and greateyesight to scratch the name "Motorola" off chips and etch in the name of Chen'scompany, "Hanxin."

Are the world's impoverished masses destined to live lives of permanent misery unless rich countries transfer wealth for spending on education and infrastructure? You might think so if your gurus on development economics earn their bread and butter "lending" at the World Bank. Education and infrastructure "investment" are two of the Bank's favorite development themes. Yet the evidence is piling up that neither government nor multilateral spending on education and infrastructure are key to development. To move out of poverty, countries instead need fast growth; and to get that they need to unleash the animal spirits of entrepreneurs.

An annual survey grades countries on a combination of factors including property rights protection, tax rates, government intervention in the economy, monetary, fiscal and trade policy, and business freedom. The nearby table shows the 2008 rankings but doesn't tell the whole story. The Index also reports that the freest 20% of the world's economies have twice the per capita income of those in the second quintile and five times that of the least-free 20%. In other words, freedom and prosperity are highly correlated.

The 2008 Index finds that while global economic liberty did not expand this year, it also did not contract. The average freedom score for the 157 countries ranked is nearly the same as last year, which was the second highest since the Index's inception. This is somewhat of an achievement considering the rising protectionist and anti-immigration sentiment in the U.S., the uncertainty created by spiking global energy prices, Al Gore's highly effective fear mongering about global warming, and the continuing threat of the Islamic jihad.

Former British colonies in Asia took three of the top five places this year. But half of the top 20 freest economies in the world are in Europe. Of the five regions surveyed, Europe is the most free, continuing to advance this year with tax cuts and other business-friendly reforms. The only other region to score above the world average this year is the Americas, which is helped by strong performers like the U.S., Canada, Chile and El Salvador. At the other end of the scale Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba dragged down the regional average.

Although overall global economic liberty did not expand, there were a few stars. Egypt was the most improved economy in the world, implementing major changes to its tax policies and business regulation environment and jumping to number 85 from 127th place last year. Mauritius was the second-best performer, moving into the top 20 from No. 34 last year. Trade liberalization and improved fiscal policies, including a flat tax, made Mongolia the third-best performer, and put it in the category of "moderately free" economies....

In "Narrowing the Economic Gap in the 21st Century," Stephen Parente, associate professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, debunks several World Bank myths by showing that it is not the resources -- land, workforce and capital -- of an economy that play the most important role in explaining higher income countries. Instead it is "the efficiency at which a society uses its resources to produce goods and services." Mr. Parente cites the microeconomic research of McKinsey Global Institute, which estimates that modern industry in India could take a huge bite out of its productivity gap with U.S. competitors by simply upgrading production techniques. India doesn't need another multilateral education project. It needs to tap into knowledge already available in successful economies -- the information and technology is out there. The trouble is that it is unavailable in many countries like India, because government barriers and constraints to limit competition make access difficult or impossible.

Jim Hansen's GISS have just put out an article that contradicts everthing we know about the raw data for global temperatures over the last decade. How does Hansen do it? A large part of the answer is chartmanship -- the art of creating almost any impression you want by the way you draw a chart. If the vertical axis on the chart below had been much compressed, for instance, you would see an almost flat line instead of a steeply rising one. But that is only part of the story. There is statistical jiggery-pokery going on too. I reprint the GISS article below -- with its accompanying graph -- followed by some comments from physicist F. James Cripwell, a former scientist with UK's Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge who worked under the leading expert in infra red spectroscopy -- Sir Gordon Sutherland - and worked with the Operations Research for the Canadian Defense Research Board.

I have also inserted a couple of italicized comments on particularly slippery statements. There is also another chart in the original article that has in its subtitle the comment "Largest increases were in the northern hemisphere". They sure were! There is NO discernible trend in the Southern hemisphere! The so-called global warming is at best Northern hemisphere warming.

Graph of global annual surface temperatures relative to 1951-1980 mean temperature. Air and ocean data from weather stations, ships and satellites. The 2007 point is the 11-month anomaly

Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth's second warmest year in a century. "It is unlikely that 2008 will be a year with truly exceptional global mean temperature," said Hansen. "Barring a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature clearly exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next few years, at the time of the next El Nino, because of the background warming trend attributable to continuing increases of greenhouse gases." The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

Goddard Institute researchers used temperature data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea ice temperature since 1982 and data from ships for earlier years. The greatest warming in 2007 occurred in the Arctic, and neighboring high latitude regions. Global warming has a larger affect in polar areas, as the loss of snow and ice leads to more open water, which absorbs more sunlight and warmth. Snow and ice reflect sunlight; when they disappear, so too does their ability to deflect warming rays. The large Arctic warm anomaly of 2007 is consistent with observations of record low geographic extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2007. "As we predicted last year, 2007 was warmer than 2006, continuing the strong warming trend of the past 30 years that has been confidently attributed to the effect of increasing human-made greenhouse gases," said James Hansen, director of NASA GISS.

A minor data processing error found in the GISS temperature analysis in early 2007 does not affect the present analysis. The data processing flaw was failure to apply NOAA adjustments to United States Historical Climatology Network stations in 2000-2006, as the records for those years were taken from a different data base (Global Historical Climatology Network). This flaw affected only 1.6% of the Earth's surface (contiguous 48 states) [But the US data is also the highest quality data. Much of the data from elsewhere is dubious. To say that the rest of the world is warming is an act of faith] and only the several years in the 21st century.

The data processing flaw did not alter the ordering of the warmest years on record and the global ranks were unaffected. In the contiguous 48 states, the statistical tie among 1934, 1998 and 2005 as the warmest year(s) was unchanged. In the current analysis, in the flawed analysis, and in the published GISS analysis, 1934 is the warmest year in the contiguous states (but not globally) by an amount (magnitude of the order of 0.01øC) that is an order of magnitude smaller than the certainty. [Still pesky that 1934 was so warm -- at the height of the Depression, when economic activity was minimal]

I do not believe the world's climate is on a warming trend, though I cannot as yet prove this. It is quite true that since somewhere around 1970, the world has warmed up. What is not clear is that, as of now, the world is still warming up.

And, of course, "now" is moving. As time goes on, I believe the indications that the world has ceaased warming, and has started to cool, will become more and more obvious.

As I have noted before, there are four major agencies which measure average global temperature anomalies, and report them of a monthly basis. These are NASA/GISS, NCDC/NOAA, HAD/CRU and RSS/MSU. The first, NASA/GISS data, shows that at present, average global temperatures are increasing. The other three show the opposite, that they are decreasing.

I am suspicious that Jim Hansen and Gavin Schmidt are closely connected with the NASA/GISS data, but they are very competent scientists with impressive credentials. If you ask for a linear least squares regression analysis, you find a linear trend of increasing temperatures. However, if you ask for a non-linear analysis, NASA/GISS shows an increasing trend, but the other three show that temperatures has passed through a maximum, and are now decreasing.

What is missing is an independent study to compare and contrast the four ways of measuring world temperature anomalies, coming up with an opinion as to which is "best", whatever this means. Until we have such a stduy, we are unlikely to make any progress in this area. Or we must wait until the data showing that world temperatures are decreasing becomes too overwhelming to be ignored.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Is that an inflammatory enough headline for you? It reflects the latest developments in the McCain campaign.

Gateway Pundit alerts us to the fact that Juan Hernandez has joined the McCain for President campaign. Who is Juan Hernandez?

He is a former head of Mexico's Ministry for Mexicans Living in the United States. According to Michelle Malkin, who debated Hernandez on multiple occasions, Hernandez' mission was to tie repatriated Mexicans "emotionally, linguistically, politically to Mexico, because then they‘ll continue to send money home.”

In fact, Hernandez told Rep. Tom Tancredo that "it‘s not two countries; it‘s just a region.”

...we are a Chicana and Chicano student movement directly linked to Aztlán. As Chicanas and Chicanos of Aztlán, we are a nationalist movement of Indigenous Gente that lay claim to the land that is ours by birthright. As a nationalist movement we seek to free our people from the exploitation of an oppressive society that occupies our land...

Put simply, MEChA's mission is straightforward: overthrow the United States Government and establish a new form of government.

The new cabinet level agency replaces the "Office for Mexicans Living Abroad" that was headed by Juan Hernandez of Dallas, Texas. Mr. Hernandez was born in Texas but he obtained dual citizenship in Mexico under a recent law passed by the Mexican Congress. Mr. Juan Hernandez was ousted by Zionist Foreign Minister Jorge Gutman after he stepped on the mercurial secretary's toes...

The "Revolutionary Council and Provisional Government of Aztlan" sent a copy of a communique to La Voz de Aztlan stating that it welcomes the Mexican government's initiative to help Mexican nationals here in Aztlan but that it vehemently rejects the Mexican government's new connections to Zionists and Zionism...

Put simply, Juan Hernandez appears to be an open-borders revolutionary who is intent on overthrowing the U.S. Government. Furthermore, by dint of his Aztlan connections, he is linked with virulent antisemitic forces.

Pakistani troops on Friday combed mountains in the volatile tribal stronghold of an Al-Qaeda-linked militant blamed by Islamabad and Washington for the killing of Benazir Bhutto. ...

The army said it had fired artillery and mortar rounds on Friday targeting militant hideouts from which troops had come under fire overnight in South Waziristan.

"A house-to-house search operation is underway in the areas where the security forces have consolidated their positions," chief military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP. No loss of life was reported in the latest skirmishes in the troubled region, which is described by the United States as a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.

In the past few days of the offensive, Pakistani forces have also used gunship helicopters to strike the hideouts of Mehsud's tribal followers.

Gazans choose to live in a state of war - a choice informed by one thing: islamo-fanaticism.

Gazans would rather curse the Israelis in artificially darkened rooms (located in a lawless Gaza which is ruled by the thugs of Hamas and the koran), then live in peace and light and the prosperity which would flow from merely recognizing Israel's right to exist.

Well, screw 'em - it's their choice. We owe them nothing. Israel owes them nothing. Gazans` have been given a corner of the Holy Land and turned it into hell.

Their misery and poverty can be eliminated with a simple act of recognizing reality - and Israel.

I doubt they can do it. Their fanaticism is more lovely to them then life itself.

Every time they exalt another suicide bomber - or parade a child in mock-suicide bomber costume - they tell us this.

"A new, cutting-edge, political TV show will challenge Islam with biting humor tomorrow night, placing the face of the prophet Muhammad onto a cookie and then having it eaten on camera.

"We're going to take a stand and say Muhammad's face is delicious," said Molotov Mitchell, the 28-year-old incendiary creator and host of "Flamethrower," a program described as a low-budget, gritty cross between the "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," and "The View" if Ann Coulter were the producer. "This is religious and culinary history in the making."

The theme of this week's episode is "All Things Islam," as panelists take on the faith of Muslims in a no-holds-barred fashion. "Islam is not even a religion," Mitchell told WND from a location somewhere in Eastern North Carolina. "It's an ideology of 'might makes right' disguised as a religion. We're going to show that Allah was with us when we baked this cookie and ate it. Deal with it!"

Mitchell and his fellow panelists - all of whom are Christians in their 20s and whom he calls the next generation of conservatism - are trying to make the point that America is still a free country, and there's no need to cower in fear from Islamo-fascism.... "What were doing is exercising our freedom of speech and freedom of the press to the fullest in order to challenge a tyrannical, oppressive system that has doomed the cultures and countries of the Middle East for centuries," Mitchell told WND. "Now it's trying to invade our borders, and somebody has to speak up about it."

I have had a bit of fun with David Neiwert (aka "Orcinus") in the past (See here and here, for example) so I was interested to see what his attack on Jonah Goldberg was like. I didn't think Jonah had much to fear and I was right. Jonah has fisked him pretty thoroughly by now (See here and here, for example) so I will just note that Neiwert presents a wholly typical example of Leftist argument -- abuse followed by distortions so great that they can only be called completely dishonest.

Look at how Neiwert starts out his review of Jonah's book:

It might be tempting to throw Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning into those same cloacal backwaters, but there is an essential difference that goes well beyond the likely much broader reach of Goldberg's book, which was inexplicably published by a mainstream house (Doubleday). Most revisionists are actually historians with some credentials, and their theses often hinge on nuances and the interpretation of details.

Goldberg, who has no credentials beyond the right-wing nepotism that has enabled his career as a pundit, has drawn a kind of history in absurdly broad and comically wrongheaded strokes. It is not just history done badly, or mere revisionism. It's a caricature of reality, like something from a comic-book alternative universe: Bizarro history. The title alone is enough to indicate its thoroughgoing incoherence

It's just ad hominem abuse. No discussion of the facts, no reasoned argument. And it doesn't get much better further on. And what Neiwert in various places refers to as "false assumptions" are usually points which -- as Jonah has noted -- are fully documented in the book and are, as such, no assumptions at all. But Neiwert has apparently not read the documentation concerned. Criticizing what they have not read is a form of arrogance one often gets from Leftists -- as Charles Murray found. Perhaps Neiwert hopes that he will simply bluff us by his vocabulary: "cloaca" is the Latin word for a drain or a sewer.

Neiwert fancies himself as some sort of expert on Fascism and it was on that subject that I have shown his absurdity before. But he has learnt nothing. See his article on Fascism here. Its ignorance is literally staggering to anyone who knows the first thing about American political history. At the top of his page he has pictures of Rush Limbaugh and Father Coughlin, followed by the explanation: "Right wing political propagandists then and now: Father Coughlin, left, and Rush Limbaugh".

Coughlin was Right-wing??? Coughlin was a great fan of that hero of the American Left: FDR. Neiwert does know that much but goes on to say that Coughlin fell out with FDR. But he does not say WHY Coughlin went sour on FDR: Because FDR was not Leftist enough for him! Neiwert obviously has not a blind clue what he is talking about. I suspect that he just saw the title "Father" and assumed from that that Coughlin MUST have been a conservative Catholic of some sort. In fact, of course the church disapproved greatly of Coughlin's writings and broadcasts -- so much so that his bishop eventually shut him up and told him to return to normal pastoral duties.

I don't think I need to say much more. There are none so blind as those who will not see. Neiwert just cannot face the fact that the two great tyrannies of the 20th century -- Communism and Fascism -- were both Leftist: Different flavours of Leftism but thoroughly Leftist all the same. The fact that they eventually fought one-another should surprise no-one. Have you noticed much love between Hillary and Obama?

In fact, with his constant inspirational calls for national unity, Obama is eerily reminiscent of the Fascists. If he spoke German he might well be inclined to adopt as his slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer -- as Hitler did ("One nation, one government, one leader"). After all, right to the end most Germans saw Hitler as a warm and kindly father-figure. And if the ruthless power-seeker that is Hillary reminds you of Joe Stalin, don't blame me!

Put very briefly, the Fascists were (following Hegel) the "one big happy family" Left while the Communists were the deeply embittered "class war" Left. Hitler only hated the Jews. Marx, Trotksy, Lenin and Stalin hated just about everybody -- Marx particularly so. You can readily see why the two types of Leftist despised one-another.

I wonder does Neiwert know that Karl Marx himself was a virulent antisemite? If antisemitism makes Hitler a Rightist, then the author of the Communist Manifesto was also a Rightist! LOL! I think that thought might even explode Neiwert's tiny brain.

If you can't afford Jonah's book, there are three of my heavily-documented accounts of the Leftist origins of Fascism here and here and here. I would love it if Neiwert tried to debunk any of those articles. Why should Jonah have all the fun?

But, judging from his attack on Jonah, Neiwert might be struck dumb in trying to attack me. Neiwert seemed to think he had made a great point by saying that Jonah lacked academic credentials. He would have great difficulty in saying that about me. It shows how stupid credentialism is. In the end it is only the facts that count.

Wake up call: It’s never been about an oil shortage but always about controlof the world’s hottest commodity and the politics of that. For some years now,‘experts’ have been predicting the decline of the oil supplies of the world.Frantic talk of ‘peak oil’ has pushed oil prices through the roof. Inthe 1970’s OPEC set off a global recession by driving oil prices past an amountequal to $100 a barrel in today’s terms.

As aresponse, Western countries feverishly developed technology to reduce their oildependence. Subsequently, demand eased up and the oil companies were left withlarge amounts of excess oil.

To avoid a price crashOPEC slowed down production while big Western firms gladly supplied theincreasing demand out of their smaller oil reserves. Now the smaller reserves ofthe West are running out and Western firms are forced to look at extremelyexpensive projects such as coaxing crude from under the icy oceans of theArctic.

Meanwhile OPEC is fast heading for a monopoly. Oilprices have already tripled since the beginning of this decade to between $60and $80 per barrel, and OPEC will probably opt to do all they can to keep supplylow and prices ever higher.

Advocates of biofuel will screamfor subsidies and sales of fuel efficient cars and hybrids will skyrocket. Whileour governments may rail at Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran for their greed,OPEC is gaining the upper hand. Why would they stop now?

Truth is, oil will not always be the leading source of energy. Man is too restless and creative a creature to continue doing the same thing forever. Of course, restlessness and creativity are rewarded in Western countries, whereas they aren't in Arab countries. Hence, our dominance in the field of technological innovations.

WASHINGTON - It's another step in the quest to create artificial organisms:Scientists have synthesized the complete DNA of a type of bacteria. Theexperiment, published online Thursday by the journal Science, isn't a livinggerm, just its genetic structure.

Ok, so what's the big deal, Pastorius? Some egghead has created an artificial organism which is little more than gunk in the primordial soup of science.

Well, kind of. But, what is the goal of the Venter Institute?

... scientists from Maryland's J. Craig Venter Institute called it the largestmanmade stretch of DNA to date, and therefore a logical step in the fledglingfield of "synthetic biology" that aims to build new organisms that workdifferently than nature intended, such as producing new fuels.

TheVenter group started with some off-the-shelf laboratory-made DNA fragments. Theyoverlapped and joined these stretches to make ever-larger chunks of geneticmaterial until they finally had a manmade copy of the entire genome of a smallbacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium, a genital germ.

Last year,Venter's team performed a "genome transplant": Researchers transplanted all ofthe genes from one species of Mycoplasma into another, switching a goat germinto a cattle germ. Somehow, the transplant itself sparked the donor genes tostart working; Venter uses a computer analogy to say it "booted up."

Nowhe must test if this new artificial Mycoplasma genome can boot up, too — byputting the DNA into a living cell to see if takes over and becomes a syntheticorganism.

"I don't view that we're creating life," Venter told TheAssociated Press last year in describing this series of experiments. "I viewthat we're modifying life to come up with new life forms by designing andsynthetically constructing chromosomes."

Over the next 20 years, synthetic genomics is going to become thestandard for making anything. The chemical industry will depend on it.Hopefully, a large part of the energy industry will depend on it. We really needto find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it, andputting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I couldmake.

Furthermore it suggests that one of the main purposes forcreating synthetic bacteria would be to reduce the dependence on fossilfuels.

It looks like we'll be able to say goodbye to Arab dominance in the energy sector, and with that we will be able to stop worrying about Islamic civilization.

What will the Muslims of the world do when Allah lets them down like that?

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff lied about their relationship last summer at a police whistle-blower trial that has cost the cash-strapped city more than $9 million, according to records obtained by the Free Press.

Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty denied during testimony in August that they had a sexual relationship. But the records, a series of text messages, show them engaged in romantic banter as well as planning and recounting sexual liaisons.

The messages are also at odds with the pair's trial testimony that they did not fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown in 2003, an ouster that led him to sue. The text messages show Beatty recalling the "decision that we made to fire Gary Brown."

One Israeli was killed and another wounded Thursday night in a shooting attack near the entrance to the Shuafat refugee camp in northern Jerusalem.

One of the wounded died after resuscitation attempts and the other, a female, was listed in serious condition.

IDF sources said that terrorists had approached the entrance to Shuafat by foot and opened fire at a group of Israelis nearby and then fled the scene. Military forces and Border Policemen immediately dispatched search parties to catch the gunmen.

In another simultaneous incident, two terrorists were killed after they infiltrated a high school in Kfar Etzion, south of Jerusalem.

The terrorists, armed with knives and possibly with a pistol, infiltrated the kibbutz - in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc - and snuck into a building used by the Makor Haim High School, run by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz.

"The terrorists came inside and began stabbing students," a defense official said. Three students were injured, including two moderately. They were all evacuated to Hadassah Hosptial in Jerusalem.

Shortly after the infiltration, a number of the school's counselors, armed with guns, arrived at the scene and shot and killed the terrorists. IDF sources hailed the student's quick response.

"This could have ended much worse," a source in the Central Command said.

I don't know if Olmert's government will take any serious action, however.

This is serious stuff, folks; serious enough that it would really help if your voices are heard today by your US Senators, by President Bush--AND by Christopher Dodd. The Democrats are playing chicken with American lives and American cities. It is time to let them know how you feel about their putting their party ahead of finding scumbags like this:

Democrat Chris Dodd is threatening a filibuster. And the jihadists are cheering.

Dodd’s objection is about as counterproductive as it gets to national security. He is unhappy because a far from perfect but comparatively sensible FISA-reform proposal that won overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate Intelligence Committee would provide telecommunications service providers with immunity from legal liability.

The telecoms, in the wake of the 9/11 atrocity, acceded to the Bush administration’s requests for assistance in carrying out the NSA’s warrantless monitoring of wartime terrorist communications that crossed U.S. borders. This effort, relying on presidential authority consistently acknowledged by the federal appeals courts, did not comply with FISA protocols.

Granting the telecoms immunity, which is not merely the only fair thing to do but the only smart thing to do, would end numerous lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and others.

…Dodd and his colleagues in the Democratic party are desperate to keep the courts front and center. Feeling the heat from their hard-Left base, they would have al-Qaeda operatives given protection against surveillance not only inside the United States but overseas — such that if, for example, jihadists inside Iraq were plotting to kill American marines there, the government would have to seek a judge’s permission before eavesdropping on their communications.

This is so patently absurd and dangerous that even the energetic Leftist Congress which enacted FISA in 1978 did not attempt it, taking pains to exempt intelligence collection outside the United States from the new (and ill-advised) requirement that the president — the constitutional official principally responsible for national security — obtain court permission before monitoring spies and terrorists. The Democrats would obviously prefer to depict such foolishness as the doing of judges rather than a policy choice bearing their own fingerprints.

Thus the Dodd gambit: Just say “no” to telecom immunity while pushing for an 18-month extension of the temporary deal Congress and the administration struck this summer, which permits the CIA and NSA to continue overseas surveillance without court permission.

Currently, that deal is scheduled to sunset in early February. The Democrats’ strategy is transparent. They realize their position underscores how weak they are on national security and how beholden they are to the CAIR/ACLU/MoveOn.org Left, which is more animated by the “rights” of terrorists than the lives of Americans. If they can con the Bush administration into accepting the 18-month extension, that takes the issue off the table for the 2008 election. Not only would Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama be able to avoid being accountable for their party’s unpopular position. The ducking would further help one of them win the presidency, whereupon she or he could help Democrats sculpt a more terrorist-friendly FISA in 2009, when no one is up for re-election and public scrutiny ebbs.

The Bush administration and the Republican presidential candidates should not let them get away with it. FISA needs a major overhaul to make it easier, not harder, to monitor the people trying to kill us. Osama bin Laden doesn’t need to apply to a sharia court before blowing up an American embassy; the president shouldn’t need to apply to a federal court to try to stop him…

The nutroots are cheering on the Dems’ obstructionist effort to block a lasting FISA makeover. Where are you?

For personal reasons (When it rains, it pours!), I've been out of touch for a few days and not paying much attention to the news.

This surprised me a bit, because Obama is supposed to be a candidate with a positive outlook:

(WASHINGTON) — Barack Obama's presidential campaign complained in a letter to the Nevada Democratic Party Wednesday that rival Hillary Rodham Clinton benefited from numerous violations of party rules during the state's caucuses on Saturday.

[...]

The letter to Nevada Democratic Chairwoman Jill Derby from Obama lawyer Robert Bauer lists instances of early door closings, obstruction of voters, and improper handling of voter preference cards. Obama aides said the campaign has received more than 1,600 complaints, including 300 that came in to a hotline at the time of the caucuses.

Bauer said the campaign is not challenging the outcome of the caucuses at the precinct level, but he asked Derby to conduct an inquiry into the Clinton campaign tactics during the caucuses....

[...]

The Clinton campaign has also complained about behavior at the caucuses....

Maybe both Obama and Clinton are following in the footsteps of Al Gore, who whined like the member of a losing junior-varsity sports team when he challenged the results in the 2000 Election?

I earned my Nobel Peace Prize by making the United Nations fix a deliberate error in its latest climate assessment. After the scientists had finalized the draft, UN bureaucrats inserted a new table, but with four decimal points right-shifted. The bureaucrats had multiplied tenfold the true contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise. Were they trying to support Al Gore's fantasy that these two ice-sheets would imminently cause sea level to rise 20ft, displacing tens of millions worldwide?

How do we know the UN's error was deliberate? The table, as it first appeared, said the units for sea-level rise were being changed. But the table was new. There was nothing to change from. I wrote to the UN that this misconduct was unacceptable. Two days later, the bureaucracy corrected, relabeled and moved the table, and quietly posted the new version on its Web site. The two ice sheets will contribute, between them, over 100 years, just two and a half inches to sea-level rise. Gore had exaggerated a hundredfold; the UN tenfold. Hawaii is not about to disappear beneath the waves....

It is not so well known that the UN’s climate reports are also error-packed and misleading. To begin with, the UN denies that global temperatures were warmer than today in the medieval warm period. It overlooks the dozens of peer-reviewed papers that establish this fact, and continues to rely on the bogus and now-discredited “hockey-stick” graph by which its previous assessment in 2001 had tried to rewrite history....

The only chapters in the UN’s 1,600-page ramblings that are worth close analysis are those which consider “climate sensitivity” -- how big is the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature? The scientific debate centers not, as the Greens try to suggest, on whether adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause warmer weather (it will), but instead on how much warmer the weather will be. So the only variable that truly matters in this debate is lambda -- the “climate sensitivity parameter.” Here are just some of the UN’s errors and exaggerations in calculating lambda.

First and foremost, the UN’s crafty definition of lambda allows it to overlook the fact that the oceans -- 1,100 times denser than the atmosphere at the surface, and many times denser still at depth -- soak up a good proportion of any additional radiant energy in the atmosphere (see papers by Lyman et al., 2006; Schwartz, 2007). The oceans cancel a great deal of “global warming,” because the next Ice Age will arrive long before the oceans lose their capacity to take up heat from the atmosphere.

Next, the UN has unwisely repealed the Stefan-Boltzmann radiative-transfer equation, the fundamental astrophysical law that relates changes in radiant energy to changes in temperature. The entire debate is about exactly that matter. Yet in 1,600 pages the UN does not mention this crucial equation once. Result: the UN’s “no-feedbacks” value of lambda is way too high. As an eminent physics professor pointed out to me recently, if the UN were correct, global surface temperature would now be 20F higher than it is.

With their love of conspiracy theories and their revived antisemitism, I wonder that the Left have not come up with the accusation implied in my heading above. Because there are in fact reasonable grounds for viewing Islam as a reactionary form of Judaism. There is not a lot in the teachings of the Koran that cannot also be found in the Torah: Stoning homosexuals to death, acceptance of slavery, subordination of women, prohibition of "graven images", killing unbelievers, "I the LORD thy God am a jealous God" etc. And, of course, monotheism. Even the Arab word for God is also Hebrew: "Allah" and "Eloah".

Israel has always had great prophets and Rabbis, however, and a great Jewish theologian -- known to Christians as St. Paul -- transformed Judaism into a much more humane faith -- a faith we now know as Christianity -- and he took that faith to the world.

But there was a backlash. The old faith still had power and Mohammed felt it. And, like St Paul, Mohammed was a proselytizer. The old mainstream Jews could not be proselytizers, of course. You were either of the "chosen people" or you were not. But there was a tremendous power in the idea of the one invisible God and it should not be surprising that TWO great proselytizers took it to the world. And it was Mohammed that stayed closest to the original. He was perfectly aware of Christianity. Powerful Christian fanatics lived not far from him in the form of the Byzantine empire. But Mohammed was a much less powerful thinker than St. Paul so he mostly just took a return to the old faith to the world.

St. Paul and his Rabbi -- Jesus Christ -- were however the ones who laid the foundation not just for military conquest (which was Mohammed's achievement) but rather for a major advance in human thinking. And other Jewish theologians have had no difficulty in also taking on board most of his ideas -- so that Paul has in fact humanized Judaism too. It is left to Islam to represent the "old" version of Judaism.

St. Paul did of course have to have a foundation for his transformation of the faith and a strong foundation was of course already there in the Torah. There is much in the Torah that is humane. Paul chose the humane side. Mohammed chose (mostly) the dark side. What an amazing body of thought to have had such huge and varied influence!

NOTE: In what I have said above, my thinking has partly been formed by what is, I believe, the universal conclusion of the textual critics: That the Pauline epistles were the earliest Christian documents. The Gospels came later.

An only tangentially related thought: I read with great interest Murray's exploration of the various reasons for Jewish brilliance. And his final suggestion did have some resonance despite the fact that I am an atheist: That maybe they really are God's chosen people! But that resonance probably has more than a little to do with the fact that I spent my early years steeped in the Bible -- years which I still remember with great joy.

Final note: The "graven images" commandment is perhaps emblematic of the great interaction between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Mohammed of course insisted on a purer form of Judaism -- i.e. keeping that commandment with great strictness -- which caused much heartburn in nearby Christian Byzantium. Byzantium was in fact for a long time racked by a controversy between the iconoclasts (tearers down of images) and the iconodules (guys who thought that pictures and statues of Christ and the saints (icons) were perfectly OK). Civil wars were fought over it.

And I cannot be too smug about all that, either. My old church (Ann St. Presbyterian -- where I still go on rare occasions and where I always feel at home) was built by men sympathetic to the "Wee Free" (Free Church of Scotland -- a very puritanical group) persuasion and it features a large circular window (Rose window) of coloured glass. But is not stained glass. It has only abstract patterns in it. No pictures. No "graven images" in fact. Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism are very different -- as different as night and day most of the time -- but their common Jewish origin does occasionally give them some surprising points of contact.

But the prohibition of alcohol is a quite surprising point of contact. There is no prohibition in the Bible -- rather the reverse in fact (John 2: 3-10; 1 Timothy 5:23; Ecclesiastes 8:15). But Muslims are strictly "dry" and so are zealous Presbyterians. I remember once in my early years taking out a very nice girl (Rhoda) from the Ann St. church and suggesting unseriously as we walked past a bar that maybe we could go in and have a drink! As a result of that heinous suggestion, I was banned by her parents from ever taking out Rhoda again! Those were the days!

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Barack Obama's real thinking about Israel and the Middle East continues to be an enigma. The words he chose in an address to AIPAC create a different impression than the composition of his foreign policy advisory team. Several advisors have evidenced a history of suspicion and worse toward Israel. One of his advisors in particular, Robert Malley, clearly warrants attention, as does the reasoning that led him to being chosen by Barack Obama.

... Robert Malley is the Director of the Middle East/North Africa Program at the International Crisis Group (ICG). Given the impressive title of the group, one might expect it to have along and impressive pedigree -- say long the lines of the well-regarded Council of Foreign Relations.

In fact, the group is rather small and it has a short pedigree. More importantly, it has ties to George Soros. Soros is a man who has supported a wide variety of groups that have shown a propensity to criticize America and Israel; a man who has made clear his goal is to break the close bonds between America and Israel ; supported the views of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer whose work on the issue of the "Israel Lobby" has been widely criticized for factual inaccuracies, shoddy research, and has been called "anti-Semitic" in the Washington Post; a man who has taken steps to counter the supposed political influence of the pro-Israel community in America; a man who has also been a key financial backer of Senator Obama's; and a man who can activate a wide variety of 527 (c) and other activist groups for any politician he supports.

Soros is a funder of the ICG through his Open Society Institute ; he serves on its Board and on its Executive Committee. Other members of the Board include Zbigniew Brzezinski (whose anti-Israel credentials are impeccable) and Wesley Clark (who called US support for Israel during the Hezbollah War a "serious mistake";

... Robert Malley's writings strike me as being akin to propaganda. One notable example is an op-ed that was published in the New York Times (Fictions About the Failure at Camp David). The column indicted Israel for not being generous enough at Camp David and blamed the failure of the talks on the Israelis.

Malley has repeated this line of attack in numerous op-eds over the years, often co-writing with Hussein Agha, a former adviser to Yasser Arafat (see, for example, Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors ). He was also believed to be the chief source for an article by Deborah Sontag that whitewashed Arafat's role in the collapse of the peace process, an article that has been widely criticized as riddled with errors and bias.

Malley is a revisionist and his views are sharply at odds with the views of others who participated at Camp David, including Ambassador Dennis Ross and President Bill Clinton. Malley's myth-making has been peddled in the notably anti-Israel magazine, Counterpunch and by Norman Finkelstein, the failed academic recently denied tenure at DePaul University . Malley's Camp David propaganda has also become fodder for Palestinians, Arab rejectionists, and anti-Israel activists across the world.

Perhaps the most important point to be made about Black turnout in 2006, however, is that there were several states where Black turnout increased significantly and had profound impacts on contested statewide Senate and gubernatorial races.

In Missouri, for instance, the Black share of the electorate increased from 8 percent in 1998 to 13 percent in 2006. That surge of Black electoral participation likely made the difference in Democrat Claire McCaskill's victory over Republican incumbent Senator Jim Talent. Similar surges in the Black share of the vote also occurred in Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, helping to propel Democratic statewide candidates to victory. Finally, the increase in the Black share of the vote in Tennessee (from 11 percent in 1998 to 13 percent in 2006) likely made the Ford/Corker Senate contest closer than it otherwise might have been.

If the Dems fail to nominate Senator Barack Hussein Obama, a disappointed and turned-off African-American electorate might fail to show up at all, giving the Republicans a lock on the Presidency, as well as many senatorial and gubernatorial contests.

On the other hand, if the GOP nominates Senator John McCain, a lot of Republicans won't show up, either.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was close to leaving the Republican Party in 2001, weeks before then-Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) famously announced his decision to become an Independent, according to former Democratic lawmakers who say they were involved in the discussions.

In interviews with The Hill this month, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.) said there were nearly two months of talks with the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCain’s chief political strategist.

Democrats had contacted Jeffords and then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) in the early months of 2001 about switching parties, but in McCain’s case, they said, it was McCain’s top strategist who came to them.

MCCAIN IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE.

MCCAIN IS NOT A LOYAL REPUBLICAN.

MCCAIN IS A GOOD HAWK, AND THAT'S ABOUT IT.

BOTTOM-LINE: MCCAIN DOESN'T DESERVE TO BE THE STANDARD-BEARER FOR THE GOP.

NOT ANYMORE THAN CHAFFEE - WHO IS NOW A DEM, AND JEFFORDS, WHO LEFT THE GOP AND CAUCUSED WITH THE DEMS.

(ASIDE: AND EVEN MCCAIN'S HAWKISHNESS IS FLAWED:

HE SAID WE'D LOSE TO SERBIA WITHOUT GROUND TROOPS - AND HE WAS WRONG; WE WON WITHOUT THEM;

HE SAID WE NEEDED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS MORE TROOPS IN IRAQ - BUT WE DEFEATED AL QAEDA WITH A SURGE OF 30,000 AND A TOTAL OF 160,000 - SO HE WAS WRONG AGAIN.)

According to this report, Ehud Olmert has responded to a request by the left-wing Peace Now gang and the Supreme Court to destroy a Jewish community north of Jerusalem in 6 months. In other words, he's willing to pay attention to the whining of group that doesn't have a legal structure.

Credit the Fed for slashing interest rates to keep the economy above water. Better late than never. Further stimulus may come in the form of lower taxes. Now, if we can only break the back of sky-high oil.

Global markets have plunged this week, fearful that the U.S. economy is tumbling into recession and dragging the rest of the world with it. Losses on Monday alone in London, Paris and Frankfurt equaled the combined GDPs of New Zealand, Hungary and Singapore. In the wake of such damage, U.S. futures were pointing to a 500-point drop in the Dow at Tuesday's open in New York — a 5% haircut.

Seeing all this, the Fed responded, holding its first emergency meeting since the one right after 9/11 and slashing rates three-quarters of a point to 3.5%. It was the biggest cut since October 1984. Well done, though a bit late.

We've been warning for some time that the economy faced growing future dangers from soaring oil prices, the subprime mortgage mess and a credit crunch. Well, if markets are any guide — and they usually are — the trouble is here and Fed action is in order. More than interest rate cuts will be needed, however.

Congress, spooked by a faltering economy and its own abysmal approval ratings, has joined with the Fed and President Bush to seek ways to stimulate growth. Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid met with the president Tuesday and emerged vowing a "bipartisan" stimulus plan.

But it's plain that Pelosi and Reid are interested mainly in cutting checks for potential voters — not in the long-term health of the economy. Why else would they propose only short-term aid — including rebates, extended jobless benefits and increased food stamp aid — that will just take money from one pocket and put it into the other, but do little to boost actual economic growth?

By contrast, Bush's $150 billion stimulus plan, amounting to 1% of GDP, looks pretty good. Yes, it includes up to $800 in rebates for each taxpayer — a sop to the Dems. But it would cut taxes on small businesses. And hopefully, it would make Bush's 2003 tax cuts permanent.

Instead of the "timely, targeted and temporary" stimulus Pelosi says her party wants, Congress should sign on to Bush's broader approach. Bush's stimulus will actually provide incentives for people to save, invest and start new businesses. These, in turn, will create jobs, produce new goods and services, and ease inflation pressures.

But, again not surprisingly, Congress is neglecting perhaps the most important stimulus of all: lower oil prices. We have billions of barrels of oil locked underground in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. We have two trillion barrels of crude in oil sands here and in Canada.

All this supply is enough to keep our economy humming until adequate oil replacements can be found. With prices today nudging $90 a barrel, we're paying roughly $1 billion a day more for crude than we did just two years ago.

This amounts to a tax that the Democrat-led Congress has irresponsibly refused to remove by letting us develop more oil. And the tax falls heaviest on the lower-income Americans that the Democrats profess to represent.

Remember: Our economy, like the rest of the world's, runs on carbon-based energy. Any long-term stimulus must respect that fact. Congress, however, has kept oil supplies tight to wage a phony fight against global warming. This is the height of irresponsibility.

Those in Congress who continue to undermine our economy by blocking every effort to increase energy supplies should be voted out of office. They're as much to blame as the foreign petrotyrants who hold us hostage to high prices knowing that America will not take matters into its own hands.

And we don't have to wait for OPEC to take pity on us for oil to become cheaper.

We can reduce the price of oil with the stroke of a pen: just by opening up ANWR and the coasts of CA and FL for oil exploration - and by granting licenses for 20 nuclear power plants and 20 clean coal-burning power plants.

Oil will hit $60/barrel in a week.

If we really want to keep America and the world's economy growing, then we will do these things.